A/V Adjustments
Let’s
talk about that set-up menu, as it features many options to tailor the
video and audio to your room and tastes. For each input, you can choose
from seven picture modes: three presets for Daylight, Normal and Night
Time; two user modes in which you can adjust the controls for
brightness, contrast, color, sharpness and tint; and two Expert modes
that are set closer to videophile standards and can’t be altered. In
the preset and user modes, you can also choose a cool, medium or warm
color temperature or go one step further and adjust the individual red,
green and blue controls to match your exact taste. That’s a lot of
options for a flat panel. The component and HDMI inputs default to the
Expert 1 picture mode, a darker mode with subdued but accurate colors.
The sharpness control is set rather high in this mode, creating visible
edge enhancement, so I opted for a user mode instead. With test
patterns from the “Video Essentials” (DVD International) and “HDTV
Calibration Wizard” (Monster) DVDs as my guide, I adjusted the video
parameters for both the HDMI and component video inputs. I should note
that a bit of edge enhancement was still visible, even with the
sharpness control set to zero. For the RF inputs, I also selected user
modes and eyeballed the adjustments for contrast, brightness, etc. The
TV’s onscreen menu covers a good portion of the screen; it’s
translucent, but making video adjustments was still a bit of a
challenge.

One feature that’s surprisingly absent is an
adjustable backlight, a now-common inclusion on many LCDs that lets you
alter the TV’s overall light output to improve brightness or black
level. The 42LB1DR does have a basic black-level setting for the HDMI
input that you can set to high, low or auto, but this really only
affects brightness within the TV’s existing light output. This TV
features LG’s XD Engine video processing, which allows it to
automatically adjust contrast, color and noise, depending on the image.
The default setting for XD is auto, and you can’t disable it if you use
one of the preset picture modes. If you select a user mode, you can set
it for manual and turn each individual setting (contrast, color, noise)
on or off. I turned off all three settings, as I prefer to set up a TV
exactly how I want it and not deal with constantly shifting parameters.

On the audio end, you can choose between six sound modes: Normal,
Stadium, News, Music, Theater and a user mode that lets you alter
treble and bass and turn on the SRS TruSurround XT or 3D EchoSound
pseudo-surround modes. Two thin front speakers reside to the sides of
the TV screen and two additional speakers rest on the back panel for
the simulated surround sound. The speakers are robust enough for a
smaller room, but I had to push the volume to fill my large living
room. If you want to send audio, like the Dolby Digital 5.1 track in an
over-the-air HDTV signal, to an external A/V receiver, an optical
digital audio output is available on the back panel and LG has included
a menu setting to turn off the TV’s audio system.

Television and Movies
The 42LB1DR’s image quality was fairly consistent from input to input,
with some minor variances. Detail is usually the first thing to jump
out at me when I look at an LCD flat panel, and the LG doesn’t
disappoint in this area. The picture isn’t as razor-sharp as a 32-inch
LCD, but it’s detailed enough to clearly render all the gory details in
CBS’s 1080i “CSI” broadcast or the crowd faces in an ABC 720p broadcast
of NBA basketball. The “Video Essentials” resolution test pattern shows
that the TV can render all of the detail in DVD sources.

The
second thing that usually jumps out at me – and sometimes even blinds
me – is brightness. Like most LCDs, this TV has ample brightness to
watch programs in a well-lit room, but it’s not excessively bright.
And, like most LCDs, the 42LB1DR sacrifices some black level in the
process. Blacks are somewhat gray, but the detail in blacks is good.
Overall, the 42LB1DR strikes a good balance between brightness and
black level that suits it for multiple viewing conditions. Darker
content, like the opening battle sequence in the pilot episode of
“Firefly” (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment), had solid depth in a
dark room, yet was still visible in a bright one.

It’s
not uncommon to see exaggerated color in an LCD, but the 42LB1DR avoids
this temptation. In Chapter Three from “Kill Bill, Volume 1” (Buena
Vista Home Entertainment), colors were rich without looking unnaturally
vibrant. Greens, in particular, can border on cartoonish, but the
outfield grass in ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” 720p broadcast was not
oversaturated. With both DVD and HDTV sources, skintones looked
accurate, with no red push.

The combination of good
color, detail and contrast makes for a generally attractive picture
through higher-end inputs like component and HDMI, and the upconversion
of standard-definition TV signals is done fairly well. SD images are
obviously softer, but this TV produces less upconversion artifacts than
many I’ve seen. Through the RF inputs, HDTV looks very good, but the
SDTV channels don’t fare as well.